Ask the Mirror

Chapter 190: The Difference

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“What in the nine hells is going on with this ba$tard?”

From behind the ridge, Lakes and Seas Wanderer snarled under his breath. Two or three others stood nearby, but none offered an answer…they, too, had been left utterly bewildered by the sudden reversal unfolding below.

Yu Ci’s shout had carried through the mist, echoing from slope to slope until it rang across the entire mountain. The rest of it might have been dismissed…but those three words at the head of it, Transcendence Sect, struck like three thunderclaps, detonating in the chests of several dozen cultivators all at once. They had only just been speaking of Fu Long’s fearsome reputation; yet set against the Transcendence Sect, what was Fu Long worth?

The Transcendence Sect occupied a seat among the supreme orders of the cultivation world…the undisputed sovereign of the western reaches, and above all of the Broken Boundary Mountain Range. In this region, the Transcendence Sect was the sky. It was the master over nearly every cultivator who trod this land. No matter how formidable one’s power, no matter how bold one’s audacity, that name alone was enough to make the blood run cold.

And indeed, the moment Yu Ci’s voice rang out, the chaos below came to an abrupt halt. Nearly everyone turned to look…though the mist was thick, and seven or eight out of ten could not make out his features clearly.

Yu Ci was acutely aware of the shift in the field. But his attention had already turned elsewhere. From behind the ridge, following several bursts of furious cursing, Lakes and Seas Wanderer’s tone shifted suddenly…and he broke into a strange, cackling laugh:

“Transcendence Sect, Transcendence Sect…wonderful, wonderful! Your old father here has never tasted the pleasures of those great sect beauties. Tonight, that shall change at last. Boys…move out!”

The words barely left his mouth before he raised the formation plate he had been warming in his palms. The elliptical metal disc blazed with light along every etched groove, and the nearly hundred miniature formation flags mounted upon it began spinning and cycling like a lantern carousel. The subsidiary plates in the hands of the cultivators around him linked their vital energies in sequence, and from the far side of the ridge came the answering hum as the array there stirred to life.

Lakes and Seas Wanderer was no more than a mid-stage Divine Connectivity cultivator…lecherous, dissolute, riddled with failings. Yet among this company, his standing fell just below Fu Long and Ma Cheng alone, and the reason was this: his profound mastery of formation arrays, the single most critical element in the whole scheme to ambush You Guanquan.

A Core Refinement cultivator could ride a spiritual artifact aloft. No matter how many men you marshaled for a siege, if the battle turned against them, flight through the sky was always an option…and Fu Long alone had no hope of stopping that. To let their quarry escape would be to fail the entire undertaking by nine-tenths. In such circumstances, the array that Lakes and Seas Wanderer had pre-laid became everything.

What covered the mountainside was a fearsome Void-Sealing Formation— designed to emit a particular resonating pulse that disrupted the circulation of Heaven and Earth vital energy in the air, cutting off a cultivator’s ability to ride a spiritual artifact in flight. Against Void Stepping cultivators and above, it was useless…but against those at the Core Refinement stage, it was precisely the right medicine.

Within mere moments of the formation activating, both You Guanquan and Fu Long in the sky above lost command of their footing and began to drop. True Baleful Essence churned more violently around them, roiling the scene below…which had only just begun to quiet…back into turmoil.

Lakes and Seas Wanderer stifled his laughter, failed, and finally let it out in full: “Transcendence Sect…come here Sect, come there Sect…without a life to spend, it’s no better than a pile of dung! That young one is only a Divine Connectivity cultivator. Three or five people working together will keep him here. And if we are thorough about it…no one walks away to spread the tale!”

His confidence was boundless, and under his lead the formation plate turned with ever greater force. Those around him might have harbored second thoughts, but occupied with pouring their full effort into operating the subsidiary plates, there was no room for hesitation. All they could hear was his voice bellowing in their ears: “Once we’re done here, everyone moves south. What can the Transcendence Sect do then?”

As the chaos deepened, Lakes and Seas Wanderer read the battlefield through the formation and grew more jubilant by the moment, shrieking: “Silence them…silence them all…leave no one behind!”

These parasitic cultivators truly are all mad. The thought surfaced in every mind around him…but upon reflection, they found a horrible logic in it. They had entered this endeavor intending to scatter the hunting party and pick them off in pieces. But circumstances had changed. Yu Ci had declared himself a Transcendence Sect member; if they were to do this cleanly, without leaving a thread to unravel, would they not have to kill every last witness?

This realization was not Lakes and Seas Wanderer’s alone. Ma Cheng, who had just barely escaped the sweep of a sword, had reached the same conclusion: Yu Ci’s declaration…true or false…had forced their hand. Every last one of the hunting party’s nearly thirty members had to be penned in and cut down, not a single one allowed to flee. The pressure had multiplied tenfold. It was like having a bone lodged in the throat…choking every breath, yet down it had to go. Where had their earlier advantage gone?

Ma Cheng’s broad face had gone a deep, livid purple, but still he had to transmit orders, rousing the confederates concealed within the hunting party to make ready.

And then, threading into his ear, came a cold and measured voice: “Ma Cheng. Zeng Liang. Li Qian—”

A string of seven or eight names, each heard with crystalline clarity…and before anyone could react, that same voice declared: “You have conspired with bandits and cut down your own companions. Your crimes are beyond reckoning. Will you not bare your necks and receive your deaths?”

A thunderclap went off inside Ma Cheng’s skull. For a long moment his mind went utterly blank, and a single thought turned and turned within the empty space:

There is a traitor among us.

The chaos erupted anew…and this time, nothing would stop it. The tangled web of allegiances left most of the hunting party still bewildered, each consumed by their own fear. Any hope of united resistance had nearly vanished. Yet what remained, fierce and undeniable, was the overwhelming desire of every man and woman present to escape with their lives.

Someone broke for the rear. Then another. The cultivators of the hunting party abandoned all thought of the unclaimed spoils still loaded on the wagon and scattered in every direction. In earlier times, Ma Cheng and his people would have gladly let them run…but now, the one who had invoked the Transcendence Sect stood proud upon the Cloud-Driven Floating Cart. Regardless of what befell him in the end, every last person who witnessed this day and slipped away would carry the story with them. Who would bear the Transcendence Sect’s fury then?

Ma Cheng felt the rage rise like a tide within him. He could attend to nothing else; he only wanted to cut through this knot in one clean stroke. He roared: “Kill that imposter!”

The words broke whatever spell had lingered. His confederates snapped awake as one. Five or six men closed in…this was work they knew, coordination born of long practice. They did not rush forward blindly; some attacked from range at the perimeter, others pressed in close to tie down his attention, while still others dove around to the side and rear of the Cloud-Driven Floating Cart, intent on fracturing Yu Ci’s concentration.

The combined assault churned True Breath into surging waves, and the cloud wagon swayed, unable to hold steady, spinning in the air.

Yu Ci stood on the wagon’s crossbar. He paid no attention to the cultivators closing in on him. His gaze had fixed, unblinking, on Ma Cheng in the distance.

He was not satisfied.

That sword strike against Ma Cheng just now…it had been his first blow delivered against a same-stage cultivator after entering the upper stage of Divine Connectivity, that state where essence, vital energy, and spirit had fused into one. Had it not been for that shielding black radiance, everything would have been perfect. He was certain: without that protective spiritual artifact, Ma Cheng would have fallen beneath his sword then and there, not merely suffered damage to his spirit-soul as he had now.

Yu Ci felt a dull, creeping dissatisfaction settle in. Over these past months, he had honed his sword techniques against monsters and fierce beasts, and had believed himself to have achieved something of worth. But today’s test had revealed the truth…cultivators and monsters were different things. Monsters might be thick-skinned and tough-fleshed, yet they were creatures of blood and bone; when he committed fully to a strike and caught even a hairline of an opening, he could trust in a single killing blow.

Yet when that same sword was turned upon a cultivator, there was every chance of encountering what he had met with Ma Cheng…a protective spiritual artifact. The Half-Mountain Mirage sword intent was formidable, but he had not yet refined it to the level of true, seamless mastery; when it struck an obstruction, its power fell sharply away, and one clean kill became impossible.

If he could not slay the enemy in one strike, what meaning did that sliver of a chance he had carved out hold?

Still far short. Still far short.

Carrying that feeling with him, a fist-sized orb of violet lightning rose from his shoulder, arcs of electricity coiling about it like darting serpents.

“All of you…get back.”

Under the terrified gaze of the surrounding cultivators, the Five Thunder Talisman…into which he had poured thirteen applications of the Qi Convergence method through the previous night…shrank sharply in on itself, and then detonated outward in a blinding ring of violet lightning. What followed was a lightning brilliance without equal: crimson-violet radiance surged like a tide rolling in from the sea, boiling the very air, unleashing walls of scalding heat. Pulled by the vital energies of those nearby, the light fractured into more than ten writhing bolts that crashed down from every direction.

Screams rose in succession.

In the way of talisman arts, the principle that preparation determines all is carried to its farthest extreme. The moment Yu Ci…through Lakes and Seas Wanderer…had come to know every detail of the enemy’s plan and made his preparations accordingly, the fate of each of these people had been sealed.

In Yu Ci’s eyes, a curious ring of luminescence expanded outward. He had opened his Dharma Eye…an ability he had only recently acquired, one that rendered solid forms transparent and laid bare the subtleties of the spirit-soul layer. Through it, Yu Ci saw the source-light of the cultivators swallowed by the lightning and flame…that point of origin he called the soul-source…flickering and scattering in an instant of ruin.

The Seven Stars Talisman Sword swept lightly. Sword intent laced with baleful essence swept through the spirit-soul layer; those phantom waveforms and latticed lines surged and then darkened. One by one, five or six soul-sources crumbled or were extinguished. In the span of a breath, only Yu Ci’s own soul-source blazed within that void…and one other.

“Sword intent condensed into baleful essence, striking the spirit-soul…before that, the true transmission of talisman arts…divine techniques of the great sects flowing out one after another like water from a spring. Hateful, hateful!”

The Black Gold Dharma Token could only invoke its self-protective shielding once each day; it had already spent itself earlier. Now the lightning struck, and Ma Cheng had no way to evade it. The sword-baleful essence that followed hit him unguarded as well…his spirit-soul suffered a second wound, and his Yin Spirit nearly shattered outright.

He stood now barely able to keep on his feet, his body a ruin of injury, yet in his chest a venomous fire burned without cease. He no longer doubted Yu Ci’s identity. Only a supreme sect like the Transcendence Sect could nurture a Divine Connectivity cultivator with such an inexhaustible arsenal. 

And it was ever thus with sect cultivators…even at equal cultivation, in contests against lone cultivators, they invariably held the upper hand, their sects’ deep reserves furnishing them with endless extraordinary arts and secret techniques. 

And it was ever thus with sect cultivators…from innate qi methods to supreme Core Refinement formulas, from the Void Stepping Method to Tribulation Crossing Secret Techniques, they never needed to agonize or scheme. They had only to follow the path laid before them. Yet ten thousand lone cultivators across this vast world had to comb the wilderness for the faintest trace of fortune, staking their lives for the sake of a single Core Refinement Method…

Wretched Heaven…how can you be so unjust?

Ma Cheng’s eyes had turned a swollen crimson; he nearly threw himself forward to tear a piece of flesh from Yu Ci with his bare teeth. But then another wave of assault struck directly into his spirit-soul, and darkness flooded in. He stared wide-eyed, and fell crashing down.

This time Yu Ci had used the technique of projecting his Yin Spirit outward, transforming it into a concussive wave, bringing down his enemy at a stroke. It appeared effortless…yet to gravely wound a same-stage cultivator’s Yin Spirit was no small drain. Still, the sight of him dispatching Ma Cheng and the others with a gesture of his hand…who among those villains had the courage left to seek their own death? They all gave wide berth, each mind now changed:

Against an enemy like this…did they truly stand any chance of winning?

The lightning orb now retained no more than a fingertip’s worth of charge. Yu Ci lacked Xie Liang’s ability to sustain such a thing for a hundred years undissipated…but he had no wish to waste what remained. A thought turned in his mind, and the orb vanished in an instant. 

A moment later, a bolt of electricity clawed its way across the open sky and, at a perfectly calculated angle, drove itself straight down behind the ridge.

Thunder rolled. Fresh screams rose.

The Void-Sealing Formation collapsed.